


Only Option

by J_33



Category: Person Of Interest - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Post 4x11, sucker for shoot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4635447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_33/pseuds/J_33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Option 833,333, saved her life, and option 833,333, ruined it too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Option

**Author's Note:**

> its kinda short, but had this convo between Root and Finch in my head so I needed to get it down

After Shaw is gone (but not dead), Root sees her all throughout New York like she never left. She sees her in Central Park walking Bear, dressed in all black. She sees her in the Subway, typing on the computer, though is it really typing if you only use two fingers? She sees her on the street, a shadow in the crowd. She sees her saving numbers, and eating steak, and cleaning her gun, and rolling her eyes, but one thing never changed. Sameen Shaw never stayed for long.

 

Root thought that she could sacrifice everyone, but she always thought she would be the one dying for the cause in the end, risking everything for the Machine, for her benevolent God. Root never thought that it would be Shaw.

 

Option 833,333, saved her life, and option 833,333, ruined it too.

 

 _The Stock Exchange_ , oh how those words made her skin crawl. She should have known it was a trap, she should have never asked Shaw to help them that day. If Samaritan didn’t kill her first, Root was sure that the guilt would.

 

The war, it must be won at all costs, but Shaw was never supposed to pay the price.

 

_It should’ve been me, it should’ve been me, it shouldn’t been me—_

 

“Miss Groves, what brings you here?” Finch asked, sitting in his normal seat at the computer table in the Subway.

 

He seemed so normal, so unaffected by everything that happened. It made Root want to shoot something.

 

“The Machine isn’t answering me anymore,” Root replied, her usual wittiness gone from her voice.

 

“Maybe she doesn’t have the answers,” Harold said.

 

“How can you just sit there, not knowing if Sameen is alive, or if she is dead?” Root asked, anger flaring through her bones.

 

“The Machine told us to stop looking,” Root remembered, _**S** ierra, **T** ango, **O** scar, **P** apa_. “She must have her reasons, even if you fail to see them,” Harold finished.

 

“You think she is dead,” Root stated, the words rolling off her tongue like venom. “After everything she did for this team, for all of us, you marked her off as dead.”

 

“Miss Groves, I wish more than anything for Sameen to be found, but you can only imagine what horrors she is enduring if she is still alive, still captured. I want to hold out hope for her return, but I also hope that she is no longing suffering, and I can’t hope for both things,” he said, his tone sad.

 

“She’s stronger than you think,” Root said.

 

“I don’t deny that, but if you truly care for her, then you have to let go for your own sake,” he said.

 

Root saw her hit the red button, she saw the bullets puncture her skin, one, two, three shots. She saw the red of the blood, she saw Martine, she saw the elevator doors closing, drowning out her screens, as Lionel and Harold held her back, back, back, back -- if only she could go back to before the Stock Exchange, before this war, and switch places.

 

_It should’ve been me, it should’ve been me, I wish it were me._

 

Root had watched Hanna walk out the library doors, to never come back, would this be the same. Was she so unlucky that everyone she touched, faced the same fate of disappearing, of leaving her alone, alone, alone.

 

“I used to think with the Machine in my ear, I could never be alone, but now I know the truth. The Machine knows where Shaw is, and if she is alive or dead, She just doesn’t care,” she said.

 

“Miss Groves, please—,” Harold started.

 

“My name is Root,” she said, before leaving the Subway, without another word.

 

Once back on the streets, she stared into one of the cameras, as snow fell around her. “We all may be irrelevant, but we’re not replaceable, just know that,” and then Root was gone.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!!


End file.
